This year, we’re feeling the road trip –nothing says freedom like the wind in your hair- and for Easter, we’re thinking of something close to home. Tom Harrow from Honest Grapes has given us his stopover list for the classic wine route from Epernay to Beaune. Rolls (what he rolled in), optional.
First stop:
Dom Perignon HQ Abbaye d’Hautvillers or, as we DP Ambassadors prefer to call it, “La Residence”. Panoramic views over the vineyards and if you are lucky a glass of Dom to toast your journey.
Second stop:
The Manor at Champagne Devaux, Bar-sur-Seine. A perfect pit-stop en route from Champagne to Burgundy. The region is closer to Chablis than Epernay and its soils are correspondingly more limestone and clay-rich than the chalk to the north.
NB – the stretch of D971 from Saint Marc sur Seine until almost the fringes of Dijon is some of the best open road, country road driving you’ll enjoy in France…
Third stop:
Driving through the vines at Chateau de Clos Vougeot, the largest of Burgundy’s Grand Crus. Where so much early modern viticulture and winemaking was advanced by the industrious monks of the chateau. We owe them so much!
Finish:
Hungry Cyclist Lodge, Auxey Duresses @HungryCyclist Tom Kevill-Davies – adventurer, tour guide, cook, host and all round top chap outside his Hungry Cyclist Lodge B&B, a previously derelict now brilliantly-restored mill in Auxey-Duresses, complete with pool and a bread/pizza oven on the way.
